About Dr Evangelos Giampazolias

Evangelos Giampazolias received his BSc in Chemistry (2009) and MSc in Clinical Biochemistry (2012) from the University of Athens in Greece. In 2012, he moved to Glasgow, UK, for his PhD at the CRUK Beatson Institute (now the CRUK Scotland Institute) under the supervision of Professor Stephen Tait to study cell death modalities that are controlled by mitochondria as anti-cancer therapies. During his PhD, he discovered the pro-inflammatory signals that accompany caspase-independent cell death as potent instigators of anti-cancer immune responses. For this, he was awarded the Institute of Cancer Sciences Prize (2017) and the CRUK Pontecorvo Prize (2018).  

Evangelos subsequently joined the group of Professor Caetano Reis e Sousa at The Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, as a Postdoctoral Fellow, to study how detection of dying tumour cells by antigen-presenting cells elicits immunity to cancer. There, he identified that the plasma actin-binding protein secreted gelsolin dampens dendritic cell-mediated cross-presentation of dead cell-associated antigens to T cells hijacking cancer immunity. He was granted an innovation patent (2020) to explore potential therapeutic targets from his findings as novel immunotherapy for cancers. Further to this, Evangelos developed an interest in understanding how the gut microbiome influences cancer immunity.  

In 2023, Evangelos established the Cancer Immunosurveillance group at the CRUK Manchester Institute, which focuses on the characterisation of the mechanisms that enable the immune system to recognise and respond to cancer through integration of cues that are elicited by dying cells and commensal microbes. During the transition to his Group Leader position, he demonstrated for the first time that the ability of the gut microbiome to instruct immune responses to extraintestinal cancers depends on the host availability of a single micronutrient, vitamin D. In 2024, Evangelos was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study how nutrient-host-microbiome interactions define immunity to cancer. His group is additionally funded by Cancer Research UK Institute Award and Royal Society Research Grant.